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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 - January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and writer. She was a member of the Democratic Party.

Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York City. She studied at Brooklyn College.

She was a member of the United States House of Representatives for New York's 2nd district. She served as a representative from 1969 to 1983.

She ran for President of the United States in 1972 as a Democrat. She lost the primary to George McGovern. Chisholm became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States.

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born in Brooklyn, New York, of immigrant parents. Her father, Charles Christopher St. Hill, was born in British Guiana and arrived in the United States via Antilla, Cuba, on April 10, 1923, aboard the S.S. Munamar in New York City. Her mother, Ruby Seale, was born in Christ Church, Barbados, and arrived in New York City aboard the S.S. Pocone on March 8, 1921. At age three, Chisholm was sent to Barbados to live with her maternal grandmother, Emaline Seale, in Christ Church; where she attended the Vauxhall Primary School. She did not return until roughly seven years later when she arrived in New York City on May 19, 1934, aboard the S.S. Narissa. In her 1970 autobiography Unbought and Unbossed, she wrote: "Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason." Chisholm is an alumna of Girls' High School, she earned her BA from Brooklyn College in 1946 and later earned her MA from Columbia University in elementary education in 1952. She was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

From 1953 to 1959, she was director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center. From 1959 to 1964, she was an educational consultant for the Division of Day Care.

In 1964, Chisholm ran for and was elected to the New York State Legislature. In 1968, she ran as the Democratic candidate for New York's 12th District congressional seat, and was elected to the House of Representatives. Defeating Republican candidate James Farmer, Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 as one of its founding members.

As a fresh black woman, Chisholm was assigned to the House Agricultural Committee. Given her urban district, she felt the placement was irrelevant to her constituents and shocked many by asking for reassignment. She was then placed on the Veterans' Affairs Committee. Soon after, she voted for Hale Boggs as House Majority Leader over John Conyers. As a reward for her support, Boggs assigned her to the much-prized Education and Labor Committee, which was her preferred committee. She was the third highest-ranking member of this committee when she retired from Congress.

All those Chisholm hired for her office were women, half of them black. Chisholm said that during her New York legislative career, she had faced much more discrimination because she was a woman than because she was black.

In the 1972 U.S. presidential election, she made a bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. She survived three assassination attempts during the campaign. She campaigned in 12 states and won the Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey primaries earning 152 delegates. However, she lost the hotly contested primaries to George McGovern at the convention in Miami Beach, Florida. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, as a symbolic gesture, McGovern opponent Hubert H. Humphrey released his black delegates to Chisholm, giving her a total of 152 first-ballot votes for the nomination. Chisholm's base of support was ethnically diverse and included the National Organization for Women.

Chisholm said she ran for the office "in spite of hopeless odds... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo." Among the volunteers who were inspired by her campaign was Barbara Lee, who continued to be politically active and was elected as a congresswoman 25 years later. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem attempted to run as Chisholm delegates in New York.

Chisholm created controversy when she visited rival and ideological opposite George Wallace in the hospital soon after his shooting in May 1972, during the 1972 presidential primary campaign. Several years later, when Chisholm worked on a bill to give domestic workers the right to a minimum wage, Wallace helped gain votes of enough Southern congressmen to push the legislation through the House.

From 1977 to 1981, during the 95th Congress and 96th Congress, Chisholm was elected to a position in the House Democratic leadership, as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus.

Throughout her tenure in Congress, Chisholm worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She was a vocal opponent of the draft and supported spending increases for education, health care and other social services, and reductions in military spending.

In 1970, she authored a child care bill. The bill passed the House and the Senate, but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon, who called it "the Sovietization of American children".

In the area of national security and foreign policy, Chisholm worked for the revocation of Internal Security Act of 1950. She opposed the American involvement in the Vietnam War and the expansion of weapon developments. During the Jimmy Carter administration, she called for better treatment of Haitian refugees.

Personal life

Chisholm was married to Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican private investigator from 1949 to 1977. In 1978, she married Arthur Hardwick, Jr., a Buffalo businessman who died in 1986. Chisholm had no children and moved to Florida when she retired.

Retirement and death

Chisholm announced her retirement from Congress in 1982. Her seat was won by a fellow Democrat, Major Owens, in 1983.

After retirement she resumed her career in education, teaching politics and women's studies and being named to the Purington Chair at Mount Holyoke College from 1983 to 1987. In 1985 she was a visiting scholar at Spelman College. In 1984 and 1988, she campaigned for Jesse Jackson for the presidential elections. In 1990, Chisholm, along with 15 other African-American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton nominated her to the ambassadorship to Jamaica, but she could not serve due to poor health. In the same year she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Chisholm retired to Florida and died on January 1, 2005, in Ormond Beach near Daytona Beach. She was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.

In February 2005, Shirley Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed, a documentary film, aired on U.S public television. It chronicled Chisholm's 1972 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was directed and produced by independent, African-American filmmaker Shola Lynch. The film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. On April 9, 2006, the film was announced as a winner of a Peabody Award.

In 1975, Chisholm was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Smith College.

In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Shirley Chisholm on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Images for kids

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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 - January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and writer. She was a member of the Democratic Party. Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, New York City. She studied at Brooklyn College. She was a member of the United States House of Representatives for New York's 2nd district.

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Robert Robinson Taylor (June 8, 1868 - December 13, 1942) was an American architect and educator. Taylor was the first African-American student enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the first accredited African-American architect when he graduated in 1892. He was an early and influential member of the Tuskegee Institute faculty.

A native of Wilmington, North Carolina, Taylor remained in architectural practice in the American South for over forty years. He designed many of the early buildings of the Tuskegee Institute, and at several other Historically black colleges and universities. As second-in-command to Booker T. Washington, the Tuskegee Institute's founder, Taylor was instrumental in both campus planning and inventing the school's industrial curriculum.

Robert Robinson Taylor was born on June 8, 1868, in Wilmington, North Carolina. His father, Henry Taylor, worked as a carpenter and businessman, born into slavery but freed in 1847 by his father and owner Angus Taylor. His mother, Emily Still, was the daughter of freedmen even prior to the Civil War. He left home for MIT in 1888, where he studied architecture. In June 1890 and again in September 1891, he was recommended for the Loring Scholarship, which he held for two consecutive academic years: 1890-1891 and 1892-1893.

During his course of study at MIT, he talked in person on more than one occasion with Booker T. Washington. What Washington had in mind was for Taylor to develop the industrial program at Tuskegee and to plan and direct the construction of new buildings for the campus. At the MIT faculty meeting on May 26, 1892, Taylor was one of twelve students in Course IV, the architectural program, recommended for a degree. The class of 1892 was the largest on record since MIT's founding. After graduation Taylor did not head directly to Tuskegee. He finally accepted the Tuskegee offer in the fall or winter of 1892.

Taylor's first building project on the Tuskegee University campus was the Science Hall (Thrasher Hall) completed in 1893. The new Science Hall was constructed entirely by students, using bricks made also by students under Taylor's supervision. The project epitomized Washington's philosophy of instilling in Tuskegee students, the descendants of former enslaved Africans, the value and dignity of physical labor. It exemplified of the capabilities of African Americans in the building trades, and it underscored the larger potential of the manual training curricula being developed at Tuskegee. A number of other buildings followed, including the original Tuskegee Chapel, erected between 1895 and 1898, and The Oaks, built in 1899 as Tuskegee's presidential residence.

From 1899 to 1902, he returned to Cleveland, Ohio, to work on his own and for the architectural firm of Charles W. Hopkinson. Upon his return to Tuskegee from Cleveland in 1902, he was architect and director of "mechanical industries" until his retirement in the mid-1930s. To develop a sound curriculum at Tuskegee, both Washington and Taylor drew inspiration from MIT as a model. Taylor's own admiration for MIT as a model for Tuskegee's development was conveyed in a speech that he delivered at MIT in 1911. Taylor cited examples to the 1911 US Congress in a paper to illustrate the kinds of rigorous ideas, approaches, and methods that Tuskegee had adopted from MIT and successfully applied within the context of a black educational institution.

Taylor also designed buildings that were not at Tuskegee. These include Carnegie libraries at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. With his later partner, the black architect Louis H. Persley, he did large buildings at Selma University in Selma, Alabama, and the Colored Masonic Temple, which is also an office building and entertainment venue, in Birmingham, Alabama.

He served for a period as vice-principal of Tuskegee, beginning in 1925. In 1929, under the joint sponsorship of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Liberian government, and Firestone Rubber, he went to Kakata, Liberia to lay out architectural plans and devise a program in industrial training for the proposed Booker Washington Institute - "the Tuskegee of Africa." Robert Taylor served on the Mississippi Valley Flood Relief Commission, appointed by President Herbert Hoover, and was chairman of the Tuskegee chapter of the American Red Cross.

Following his retirement to his native Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1935, the governor of North Carolina appointed Taylor to the board of trustees of what is now Fayetteville State University. Moreover, in 1942, less than a decade after his retirement from Tuskegee, he wrote to the secretary of his MIT class indicating that he had just been released from treatment for an unspecified illness at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "Thanks to a kind Providence and skillful physicians," he said, "I am much better now."

Personal life

In 1898, he married Beatrice Rochon Taylor. They had four children, one of whom, Robert Rochon Taylor, became a noted housing advocate in Chicago. Beatrice's younger sister was teacher and pharmacist Etnah Rochon Boutte. After Beatrice died in 1906, Robert remarried in 1912 to Nellie Chestnutt; they had one child.

He died on December 13, 1942, while attending services in the Tuskegee Chapel, the building that he considered his most outstanding achievement as an architect. He was buried at the Pine Forest Cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina.

The Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science at Tuskegee University is named for Taylor. The housing project in Chicago, Robert Taylor Homes, was named after his son, Robert Rochon Taylor, a civic leader and former Chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority.

The US Postal Service has a postage stamp with his likeness.

His great-granddaughter, Valerie Jarrett, was a senior advisor to Former President Barack Obama.

Huntington Hall (1900)

Emery dormitories 4 buildings (1900)

Dorothy Hall (1901) Tuskegee Institute

Women's Trades Building (1901)

Carnegie Library (1901)

Administration Building (1902-03)

Rockefeller Hall (1903)

Men's residence Hall (1904)

Douglass Hall (1904)

Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building academic building(1904-05)

Tantum Hall (1907)

Milbank Agriculture Building (1909)

Tompkins Hall, dining facility (1910)

White Hall, women's dormitory (1910)

John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital (1913)

Laundry, now The George Washington Carver Museum (1915)

James Hall (1921)

Prince Hall Masonic Temple (1924)

Sage Hall (1927)

Wilcox Trade Buildings, architecture buildings (1928)

Logan Hall, old gym (1931)

Armstrong Science Building (1932)

Hollis Burke Frissell Library (1932)

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Robert Robinson Taylor (June 8, 1868 - December 13, 1942) was an American architect and educator. Taylor was the first African-American student enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the first accredited African-American architect when he graduated in 1892. He was an early and influential member of the Tuskegee Institute faculty.

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Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 - April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). The New York Times dubbed him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left upon his death.

Ralph Waldo Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born at 407 NE 1st Street in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap, on March 1, 1913.

Oklahoma City's 407 East First Street buzzed with excitement as Ida Ellison, whom close friends called "Brownie," neared term in early 1913. She and her husband Lewis lived in an apartment in a large rooming house owned by J. D. Randolph and his family.

He was the second of three sons; firstborn Alfred died in infancy, and younger brother Herbert Maurice (or Millsap) was born in 1916. Lewis Alfred Ellison, a small-business owner and a construction foreman, died in 1916, after an operation to cure internal wounds suffered after shards from a 100-lb ice block penetrated his abdomen, when it was dropped while being loaded into a hopper. The elder Ellison loved literature, and doted on his children. Ralph later discovered, as an adult, that his father had hoped he would grow up to be a poet.

In 1921, Ellison's mother and her children moved to Gary, Indiana, where she had a brother. According to Ellison, his mother felt that "my brother and I would have a better chance of reaching manhood if we grew up in the north." When she did not find a job and her brother lost his, the family returned to Oklahoma, where Ellison worked as a busboy, a shoeshine boy, hotel waiter, and a dentist's assistant. From the father of a neighborhood friend, he received free lessons for playing trumpet and alto saxophone, and would go on to become the school bandmaster.

Ida remarried three times after Lewis died. However, the family life was precarious, and Ralph worked various jobs during his youth and teens to assist with family support. While attending Douglass High School, he also found time to play on the school's football team. He graduated from high school in 1931. He worked for a year, and found the money to make a down payment on a trumpet, using it to play with local musicians, and to take further music lessons. At Douglass, he was influenced by principal Inman E. Page and his daughter, music teacher Zelia N. Breaux.

At Tuskegee Institute

Ellison applied twice for admission to Tuskegee Institute, the prestigious all-black university in Alabama founded by Booker T. Washington. He was finally admitted in 1933 for lack of a trumpet player in its orchestra. Ellison hopped freight trains to get to Alabama, and was soon to find out that the institution was no less class-conscious than white institutions generally were.

Ellison's outsider position at Tuskegee "sharpened his satirical lens," critic Hilton Als believes: "Standing apart from the university's air of sanctimonious Negritude enabled him to write about it." In passages of Invisible Man, "he looks back with scorn and despair on the snivelling ethos that ruled at Tuskegee."

Tuskegee's music department was perhaps the most renowned department at the school, headed by composer William L. Dawson. Ellison also was guided by the department's piano instructor, Hazel Harrison. While he studied music primarily in his classes, he spent his free time in the library with modernist classics. He cited reading T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land as a major awakening moment. In 1934, he began to work as a desk clerk at the university library, where he read James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. Librarian Walter Bowie Williams enthusiastically let Ellison share in his knowledge.

A major influence upon Ellison was English teacher Morteza Drezel Sprague, to whom Ellison later dedicated his essay collection Shadow and Act. He opened Ellison's eyes to "the possibilities of literature as a living art" and to "the glamour he would always associate with the literary life." Through Sprague, Ellison became familiar with Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, identifying with the "brilliant, tortured anti-heroes" of those works.

As a child, Ellison evidenced what would become a lifelong interest in audio technology, starting by taking apart and rebuilding radios, and later moved on to constructing and customizing elaborate hi-fi stereo systems as an adult. He discussed this passion in a December 1955 essay, "Living With Music," in High Fidelity magazine. Ellison scholar John S. Wright contends that this deftness with the ins-and-outs of electronic devices went on to inform Ellison's approach to writing and the novel form. Ellison remained at Tuskegee until 1936, and decided to leave before completing the requirements for a degree.

Desiring to study sculpture, he moved to New York City on July 5, 1936, and found lodging at a YMCA on 135th Street in Harlem, then "the culture capital of black America." He met Langston Hughes, "Harlem's unofficial diplomat" of the Depression era, and one-as one of the country's celebrity black authors-who could live from his writing. Hughes introduced him to the black literary establishment with Communist sympathies.

He met several artists who would influence his later life, including the artist Romare Bearden and the author Richard Wright (with whom he would have a long and complicated relationship). After Ellison wrote a book review for Wright, Wright encouraged him to write fiction as a career. His first published story was "Hymie's Bull," inspired by Ellison's 1933 hoboing on a train with his uncle to get to Tuskegee. From 1937 to 1944, Ellison had over 20 book reviews, as well as short stories and articles, published in magazines such as New Challenge and The New Masses.

Wright was then openly associated with the Communist Party, and Ellison was publishing and editing for communist publications, although his "affiliation was quieter," according to historian Carol Polsgrove in Divided Minds. Both Wright and Ellison lost their faith in the Communist Party during World War II, when they felt the party had betrayed African Americans and replaced Marxist class politics with social reformism. In a letter to Wright, dated August 18, 1945, Ellison poured out his anger with party leaders: "If they want to play ball with the bourgeoisie they needn't think they can get away with it. ... Maybe we can't smash the atom, but we can, with a few well chosen, well written words, smash all that crummy filth to hell." In the wake of this disillusion, Ellison began writing Invisible Man, a novel that was, in part, his response to the party's betrayal.

In 1938, Ellison met Rosa Araminta Poindexter, a woman two years his senior. They were married in late 1938. Rose was a stage actress, and continued her career after their marriage. In biographer Arnold Rampersad's assessment of Ellison's taste in women, he was searching for one "physically attractive and smart who would love, honor, and obey him--but not challenge his intellect." At first they lived at 312 West 122nd Street, Rose's apartment, but moved to 453 West 140th Street after her income shrank. In 1943 his marriage was over.

At the start of World War II, Ellison was classed 1A by the local Selective Service System, and thus eligible for the draft. However, he was not drafted. Toward the end of the war, he enlisted in the United States Merchant Marine. In 1946, he married Fanny McConnell, an accomplished person in her own right: a scholarship graduate of the University of Iowa who was a founder of the Negro People's Theater in Chicago and a writer for The Chicago Defender. While he wrote Invisible Man, she helped support Ellison financially by working for American Medical Center for Burma Frontiers (the charity supporting Gordon S. Seagrave's medical missionary work). In 1946, Ellison composed and wrote the lyrics for at least two songs, "Flirty" and "It Would Only Hurt Me If I Knew." From 1947 to 1951, he earned some money writing book reviews but spent most of his time working on Invisible Man. Fanny also helped type Ellison's longhand text and assisted him in editing the typescript as it progressed.

Published in 1952, Invisible Man explores the theme of a person's search for their identity and place in society, as seen from the perspective of the first-person narrator, an unnamed African American man, first in the Deep South and then in the New York City of the 1930s. In contrast to his contemporaries such as Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Ellison created characters that are dispassionate, educated, articulate, and self-aware. Through the protagonist, Ellison explores the contrasts between the Northern and Southern varieties of racism and their alienating effect. The narrator is "invisible" in a figurative sense, in that "people refuse to see" him, and also experiences a kind of dissociation.

Later years

In 1962, the futurist Herman Kahn recruited Ellison as a consultant to the Hudson Institute in an attempt to broaden its scope beyond defense-related research.

In 1964, Ellison published Shadow and Act, a collection of essays, and began to teach at Bard College, Rutgers University and Yale University, while continuing to work on his novel. The following year, a Book Week poll of 200 critics, authors, and editors was released that proclaimed Invisible Man the most important novel since World War II.

In 1967, Ellison experienced a major house fire at his summer home in Plainfield, Massachusetts, in which he claimed more than 300 pages of his second novel manuscript were lost. A perfectionist regarding the art of the novel, Ellison had said in accepting his National Book Award for Invisible Man that he felt he had made "an attempt at a major novel" and, despite the award, he was unsatisfied with the book. Ellison ultimately wrote more than 2,000 pages of this second novel but never finished it.

Ellison died on April 16, 1994, of pancreatic cancer and was interred in a crypt at Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan.

Awards and recognition

Invisible Man won the 1953 US National Book Award for Fiction.

The award was his ticket into the American literary establishment. He eventually was admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received two President's Medals (from Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan) and a State Medal from France. He was the first African-American admitted to the Century Association and was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Harvard University. Disillusioned by his experience with the Communist Party, he used his new fame to speak out for literature as a moral instrument. In 1955 he traveled to Europe, visiting and lecturing, settling for a time in Rome, where he wrote an essay that appeared in a 1957 Bantam anthology called A New Southern Harvest. Robert Penn Warren was in Rome during the same period, and the two writers became close friends. Later, Warren would interview Ellison about his thoughts on race, history, and the Civil Rights Movement for his book Who Speaks for the Negro? In 1958, Ellison returned to the United States to take a position teaching American and Russian literature at Bard College and to begin a second novel, Juneteenth. During the 1950s, he corresponded with his lifelong friend, the writer Albert Murray. In their letters they commented on the development of their careers, the Civil Rights Movement, and other common interests including jazz. Much of this material was published in the collection Trading Twelves (2000).

Writing essays about both the black experience and his love for jazz music, Ellison continued to receive major awards for his work. In 1969, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom; the following year, he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France and became a permanent member of the faculty at New York University as the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities, serving from 1970 to 1980.

In 1975, Ellison was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his hometown of Oklahoma City honored him with the dedication of the Ralph Waldo Ellison Library. Continuing to teach, Ellison published mostly essays, and in 1984, he received the New York City College's Langston Hughes Medal. In 1985, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In 1986, his Going to the Territory was published; this is a collection of seventeen essays that included insight into southern novelist William Faulkner and Ellison's friend Richard Wright, as well as the music of Duke Ellington and the contributions of African Americans to America's national identity.

In 1992, Ellison was awarded a special achievement award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards; his artistic achievements included work as a sculptor, musician, photographer, and college professor as well as his writing output. He taught at Bard College, Rutgers University, the University of Chicago, and New York University. Ellison was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Legacy and posthumous publications

After Ellison's death, more manuscripts were discovered in his home, resulting in the publication of Flying Home and Other Stories in 1996. In 1999, his second novel, Juneteenth, was published under the editorship of John F. Callahan, a professor at Lewis & Clark College and Ellison's literary executor. It was a 368-page condensation of more than 2,000 pages written by Ellison over a period of 40 years. All the manuscripts of this incomplete novel were published collectively on January 26, 2010, by Modern Library, under the title Three Days Before the Shooting...

On February 18, 2014, the USPS issued a 91¢ stamp honoring Ralph Ellison in its Literary Arts series.

A park on 150th Street and Riverside Drive in Harlem (near 730 Riverside Drive, Ellison's principal residence from the early 1950s until his death) was dedicated to Ellison on May 1, 2003. In the park stands a 15 by 8-foot bronze slab with a "cut-out man figure" inspired by his book Invisible Man.

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Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 - April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986).

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Matthew Alexander Henson (August 8, 1866 - March 9, 1955) was an American explorer and assistant of Robert Peary on various expeditions, the most famous being a 1909 expedition during which he may have been the first person to reach the Geographic North Pole.

Henson was born on August 8, 1866 in Nanjemoy, Maryland. He was married to Lucy Ross from 1906 until his death in 1955. Henson died on March 9, 1955 in his home in The Bronx, New York from a stroke, aged 88.

Photograph of Henson and the four Inuit guides on the last stretch of their 1908-09 expedition, taken by Peary at what they believed to be the North Pole.

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Matthew Alexander Henson (August 8, 1866 - March 9, 1955) was an American explorer and assistant of Robert Peary on various expeditions, the most famous being a 1909 expedition during which he may have been the first person to reach the Geographic North Pole. Henson was born on August 8, 1866 in Nanjemoy, Maryland.

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Guion Stewart Bluford Jr., Ph.D. (born November 22, 1942), ( Col, USAF, Ret.), is an American aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer and fighter pilot, and former NASA astronaut.

Bluford was the first African American in space. Before becoming an astronaut, he was an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he remained while assigned to NASA, rising to the rank of Colonel. He participated in four Space Shuttle flights between 1983 and 1992. In 1983, as a member of the crew of the Orbiter Challenger on the mission STS-8.

Personal life

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bluford graduated from Overbrook High School in 1960. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1964, a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 1974, a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Laser Physics, again from AFIT, in 1978, and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Houston-Clear Lake in 1987. He has also attended the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania.

His hobbies include reading, swimming, jogging, racquetball, handball, scuba diving and golf. He married Linda Tull in 1964 and has two sons, Guion III and James.

Air Force career

In August 1972, Bluford entered the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology residency school at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Upon graduating in 1974 with his master's degree, he was assigned to the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as a staff development engineer. He served as deputy for advanced concepts for the Aeromechanics Division and as branch chief of the Aerodynamics and Air frame Branch in the Laboratory. He has written and presented several scientific papers in the area of computational fluid dynamics.

He has logged over 5,200 hours of jet flight time in the T-33, T-37, T-38, F-4C, U-2/ TR-1, and F-5A/B aircraft, including 1,300 hours as a T-38 instructor pilot. He also has an FAA commercial pilot license.

NASA career

Bluford's first mission was STS-8, which launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on August 30, 1983. This was the third flight for the Orbiter Challenger and the first mission with a night launch and night landing. During the mission, the STS-8 crew deployed the Indian National Satellite (INSAT-1B); tested the Canadian-built robotic arm (the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS) or Canadarm) with the Payload Flight Test Article (PFTA); operated the Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System (CFES) with live cell samples; conducted medical measurements to understand biophysiological effects of space flight; and activated four "Getaway Special" canisters. STS-8 completed 98 orbits of the Earth in 145 hours before landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on September 5, 1983.

Bluford then served on the crew of STS-61-A, the German D-1 Spacelab mission, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on October 30, 1985. This mission was the first to carry eight crew members, the largest crew to fly in space and included three European payload specialists. This was the first dedicated Spacelab mission under the direction of the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DFVLR) and the first U.S. mission in which payload control was transferred to a foreign country (German Space Operations Center, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany). During the mission, the Global Low Orbiting Message Relay Satellite (GLOMR) was deployed from a "Getaway Special" (GAS) container, and 76 experiments were performed in Spacelab in such fields as fluid physics, materials processing, life sciences, and navigation. After completing 111 orbits of the Earth in 169 hours, Challenger landed at Edwards Air Force Base on November 6, 1985.

Bluford also served on the crew of STS-39, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 28, 1991, aboard the Orbiter Discovery. The crew gathered aurora, Earth-limb, celestial, and Shuttle environment data with the AFP-675 payload. This payload consisted of the Cryogenic Infrared Radiance Instrumentation for Shuttle (CIRRIS-1A) experiment, Far Ultraviolet Camera experiment (FAR UV), the Uniformly Redundant Array (URA), the Quadrupole Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (QINMS), and the Horizon Ultraviolet Program (HUP) experiment. The crew also deployed and retrieved the SPAS-II which carried the Infrared Background Signature Survey (IBSS) experiment. The crew also operated the Space Test Payload-1 (STP-1) and deployed a classified payload from the Multi-Purpose Experiment Canister (MPEC). After completing 134 orbits of the Earth and 199 hours in space, Discovery landed at the Kennedy Space Center on May 6, 1991.

Bluford's last mission was STS-53, which launched from Kennedy Space Center on December 2, 1992. The crew of five deployed the classified Department of Defense payload DOD-1 and then performed several Military-Man-in-Space and NASA experiments. After completing 115 orbits of the Earth in 175 hours, Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base on December 9, 1992.

With the completion of his fourth flight, Bluford has logged over 688 hours in space.

Bluford, an Eagle Scout, was designated as the emissary to return the Challenger flag to Boy Scout Troop 514 of Monument, Colorado in December 1986. On December 18 of that year, he presented the flag to the troop in a special ceremony at Falcon Air Force Base.

Post-NASA career

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Bluford on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. In 2006, Bluford was recognized as a distinguished alumnus of Penn State by being selected as the Grand Marshal for his alma mater's Homecoming celebration.

Organizations

Bluford is a member and a fellow of many organizations:

Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Board of Governors, National Space Club (1997 to 2001)

Board of Directors, National Inventor's Hall of Fame Foundation (1997 to 2002)

Board of Directors, The Western Reserve Historical Society (1997 to 2003)

Board of Directors, The Great Lakes Science Center (1997 to 2003)

National Research Council (NRC) Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, (1993 to 1998)

Board of Directors, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, (1995 to 2001)

Board of Directors, U.S. Space Foundation (2000 to 2006)

Board of Directors, ENSCO, Inc., (2005 to present)

Board of Trustees, The Aerospace Corporation (1999 to 2008)

Executive Director of Investigative Activities, Columbia Accident Investigation Board (2003)

Society of Distinguished Alumni, Pennsylvania State University (1986 to present)

Committee on Minority Activities, Penn State College of Engineering, Pennsylvania State University (1986 to 2006)

Leadership Cleveland (1995 to present)

Board of Visitors, Hiram College, (2004 to 2009)

Board of Advisors, Coalition for Space Exploration (2006 to 2010)

Tau Beta Pi

Omicron Delta Kappa

Sigma Iota Epsilon

National Technical Association and Tuskegee Airmen.

Awards and honors

USAF Command Pilot Astronaut Wings (1983)

Defense Superior Service Medal (1984)

Legion of Merit (1993)

three Defense Meritorious Service Medals (1986, 1992 and 1993)

Air Force Meritorious Service Medal (1978)

ten Air Force Air Medals (1967)

Air Force Commendation Medal (1972)

three Air Force Outstanding Unit Awards (1967, 1970 and 1972)

National Intelligence Medal of Achievement (1993)

National Defense Service Medal (1965)

Vietnam Service Medal (1967)

Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm (1967)

Vietnam Campaign Medal (1967)

NASA Distinguished Service Medal (1994)

NASA Exceptional Service Medal (1992)

four NASA Group Achievement Awards (1980, 1981, 1989, and 2003)

NASA Space Flight Medals (1983, 1985, 1991 and 1992)

German Air Force (Luftwaffe) Aviation Badge from the Federal Republic of West Germany (1969)

Leadership Award of Phi Delta Kappa (1962)

T-38 Instructor Pilot of the Month (1970)

Air Training Command Outstanding Flight Safety Award (1970)

Air Force Institute of Technology's Mervin E. Gross Award (1974)

Who's Who Among Black Americans (1975 to 1977)

National Society of Black Engineers Distinguished National Scientist Award (1979)

Pennsylvania State University Alumni Association's Distinguished Alumni Award (1983), the Alumni Fellows Award (1986)

Ebony Black Achievement Award (1983)

NAACP Image Award (1983)

City of Philadelphia's Philadelphia Bowl (1983)

Who's Who in America (1983 to present)

Pennsylvania Distinguished Service Medal (1984)

New York City Urban League's Whitney Young Memorial Award

1991 Black Engineer of the Year Award

Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) V. M. Komarov Diploma (1993)

International Space Hall of Fame inductee (1997)

U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame inductee (2010)

National Aviation Hall of Fame inductee (2019)

Air Force Institute of Technology Distinguished Alumni Award (2002)

University of Houston-Clear Lake Distinguished Alumni Award (2003)

The Pennsylvania Society Gold Medal (2011)

He also received honorary doctorate degrees from Florida A&M University, Texas Southern University, Virginia State University, Morgan State University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Tuskegee Institute, Bowie State College, Thomas Jefferson University, Chicago State University, Georgian Court University, Drexel University, Kent State University, Central State University and the University of the Sciences.

On July 25, 2017, the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered Hold Fast to Dreams, a 25-minute piece for orchestra and choir in four movements, commissioned by the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in honor of Bluford, and written by composer Nolan Williams Jr.

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Guion Stewart Bluford Jr., Ph.D. (born November 22, 1942), ( Col, USAF, Ret.), is an American aerospace engineer, retired U.S. Air Force officer and fighter pilot, and former NASA astronaut. Bluford was the first African American in space. Before becoming an astronaut, he was an officer in the U.S.

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Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 - July 27, 1963) was an African-American inventor and community leader.

He is known for his inventions which included a type of protective respiratory hood (or gas mask), a traffic signal, and a hair-straightening chemical. He is also known for a heroic rescue in 1916 in which he and three others used the safety hood device he'd developed to save workers trapped within a water intake tunnel, fifty feet beneath Lake Erie. He is also credited as the first African American in Cleveland, Ohio, to own an automobile.

Early life and education

Morgan was born in 1877 in Claysville, Harrison County, Kentucky, an almost exclusively African American community outside Paris, Kentucky. His father was Sydney Morgan, a son and freed slave of Confederate Gen John H. Morgan of Morgan's Raiders. His mother, also a freed slave, was Elizabeth Reed, daughter of Rev. Garrett Reed; she was part Native American. He had at least one sibling, a brother named Frank, who helped in the 1916 Lake Erie tunnel rescue. Morgan received education up to sixth grade at Branch Elementary School in Claysville, then moved in search of work at the age of 14 to Cincinnati, Ohio.

He spent most of his teenage years working as a handyman for a Cincinnati landowner. Like many American children growing up at the turn of the century, Morgan had to quit school at a young age to work full-time. Morgan was able to hire a tutor and continue his studies while working in Cincinnati. In 1895, he moved to Cleveland, where he began repairing sewing machines for a clothing manufacturer. This experience sparked Morgan's interest in how things worked, and he built a reputation for fixing them. His first invention, developed during this period, was a belt fastener for sewing machines.

In 1907, Morgan opened a sewing machine shop. One year late, more conscious of his heritage, he helped start the Cleveland Association of Colored Men in 1908. One year later, he and his wife Mary Anne opened Morgan's Cut Rate Ladies Clothing Store. The shop, which made coats, suits, dresses, and other clothing, ultimately had 32 employees.

Around 1910, his interest in repairing other people's inventions waned, and he became interested in developing some of his own. He received his first patent in 1912.

In 1916, Morgan rescued workers trapped in a water intake tunnel 50 ft (15 m) beneath Lake Erie, using a hood fashioned to protect his eyes from smoke and featuring a series of air tubes that hung near the ground to draw clean air beneath the rising smoke.

He received a patent for his smoke hood design in 1914, the year he launched the National Safety Device Company. It is unknown whether the smoke hood brought him any commercial success. No sales figures have been found but his use of guerrilla marketing, going to different venues and demonstrating his smoke hood by strapping it on and entering a smoke-filled teepee, certainly demonstrated his faith in his own invention.

In 1913 he incorporated hair care products into his growing list of patents and launched the G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Company, which sold hair care products, including his patented hair straightening cream, a hair coloring, and a hair straightening comb invented by Morgan.

Later in life he developed glaucoma and by 1943 was functionally blind. He had poor health the rest of his life, but continued to work on his inventions. One of his last was a self-extinguishing cigarette, which used a small plastic pellet filled with water placed just before the filter. He died on July 27, 1963, at age 86 and was buried at the Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.

Products and inventions

Hair care products

Morgan experimented with a liquid that gave sewing machine needles a high polish that prevented the needle from burning fabric as it sewed. In 1905, Morgan accidentally discovered that the liquid could also straighten hair. He made the liquid into a cream and launched the G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Company to market it. He also made a black hair oil dye and invented a curved-tooth comb for hair straightening in 1910.

Garrett Morgan invented a safety hood smoke protection device after seeing firefighters struggling from the smoke they encountered in the line of duty. His device used a wet sponge to filter out smoke and cool the air. It also took advantage of the way smoke and fumes tend to rise to higher positions while leaving a layer of more breathable air below, by using an air intake tube that dangled near the floor. The safety hood used a series of tubes to draw clean air of the lowest level the tubes could extend to. Smoke, being hotter than the air around it, rises, and by drawing air from the ground, the Safety Hood provided the user with a way to perform emergency respiration. He filed for a patent on the device in 1912, and founded a company called the National Safety Device Company in 1914 to market it. He was able to sell his invention around the country, sometimes using the tactic of having a hired white actor take credit rather than revealing himself as to its inventor. For demonstrations of the device, he sometimes adopted the disguise of "Big Chief Mason", a purported full-blooded Indian from the Walpole Island Indian Reserve in Canada. He would demonstrate the device by building a noxious fire fueled by tar, sulfur, formaldehyde and manure inside an enclosed tent. Disguised as Big Chief Mason, he would enter the tent full of black smoke, and would remain there for 20 minutes before emerging unharmed.

His safety hood device was simple and effective, whereas the other devices in use at the time were generally difficult to put on, excessively complex, unreliable, or ineffective. It was patented and awarded a gold medal two years later by the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Morgan's safety hood was used to save many lives during the period of its use. By World War I, his breathing device was refined to carry its own air supply, making it a gas mask. However, upon their entry into the First World War, the United States Army adopted the British Small Box Respirator and French M2 Respirator as their standard anti-gas equipment, the former invented by Newfoundlander Cluny MacPherson.

He also developed later models that incorporated an airbag that could hold about 15 minutes of fresh air.

His invention became known nationally when he led a rescue that saved several men's lives after a July 24, 1916 tunnel explosion under Lake Erie. Before Morgan arrived, two previous rescue attempts had failed. The attempted rescuers had become victims themselves by entering the tunnel and not returning. Morgan was roused in the middle of the night after one of the members of the rescue team who had seen a demonstration of his device sent a messenger to convince him to come and to bring as many of his hoods as he could. He arrived on the scene still wearing his pajamas, and brought his brother Frank and four of the hoods with him. Most of the rescuers on the scene were initially skeptical of his device, so he and his brother went into the tunnel along with two other volunteers, and succeeded in pulling out two men from the previous rescue attempts. He emerged carrying a victim on his back, and his brother followed just behind with another. Others joined in after his team succeeded, and rescued several more. His device was also used to retrieve the bodies of the rescuers that did not survive. Morgan personally made four trips into the tunnel during the rescue, and his health was affected for years afterward from the fumes he encountered there. Cleveland's newspapers and city officials initially ignored Morgan's act of heroism as the first to rush into the tunnel for the rescue and his key role as the provider of the equipment that made the rescue possible, and it took years for the city to recognize his contributions. City officials requested the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission to issue medals to several of the men involved in the rescue, but excluded Morgan from their request. He believed that the omission was racially motivated. Later, in 1917, a group of citizens of Cleveland tried to correct for the omission by presenting him with a diamond-studded gold medal. After the heroic rescue Morgan's company received order requests from fire departments all over the country. However, the national news contained photographs of him, and officials in a number of southern cities canceled their existing orders when they discovered he was black.

He was also given a medal from the International Association of Fire Engineers, which made him an honorary member.

Morgan's invention of the safety hood was featured on the television show Inventions that Shook the World and Mysteries at the Museum (S08E05).

Traffic signal

The first American-made automobiles were introduced to consumers just before the turn of the twentieth century, and pedestrians, bicycles, animal-drawn wagons and motor vehicles all had to share the same roads. To deal with the growing problem of traffic accidents, a number of different versions of traffic signaling devices began to be developed simultaneously, starting around 1913.

Morgan had witnessed a serious accident at an intersection, and he filed a patent for a traffic control device having a third "warning" position in 1922. The patent was granted in 1923, though this was not the first system with a warning, a three-signal system being invented in 1920 by William Potts, and several other previous systems some of which had audible warnings.

Community leadership

In 1908, he co-founded the Cleveland Association of Colored Men, which later merged with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Morgan served as its treasurer. He was a member of the NAACP and donated money to Historically Black Colleges and Universities colleges.

Morgan, in 1920, founded the Cleveland Call, a weekly newspaper and, in 1938, subsequently participated in its merger that created the Cleveland Call and Post newspaper. Morgan purchased a farm near Wakeman, Ohio, and upon that land build the Wakeman Country Club, open to Blacks, unlike most country clubs then.

Morgan was a member of the Prince Hall Freemasons, in Excelsior Lodge No. 11 of Cleveland, Ohio. He belonged to Antioch Baptist Church.

In 1931, seeing that the city was neither properly addressing the needs of its African American citizens, he ran for a seat on the Cleveland City Council as an independent, but was not elected.

Personal life

He married Madge Nelson in 1896, only to divorce in 1898. In 1908 he and Mary Hasek were married and together, they had three children: John P.; Garrett A., Jr. and Cosmo.

Morgan died in Cleveland in 1963, where he was interred in Lake View Cemetery.

Awards and recognitions

At the Emancipation Centennial Celebration in Chicago, Illinois, in August 1963 (one month after his death), Morgan was nationally recognized.

In the Cleveland, Ohio area, the Garrett A. Morgan Cleveland School of Science and the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant have been named in his honor. An elementary school in Chicago was also named after him. An elementary school bearing his name opened in the fall of 2016 in Lexington, Kentucky. In Prince George's County, Maryland, there is a street named Garrett A. Morgan Boulevard (formerly Summerfield Boulevard until 2002) and the adjacent Metro stop (Morgan Boulevard) also bears his name.

Morgan was included in the 2002 book 100 Greatest African Americans by Molefi Kete Asante.

Morgan is an honorary member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Documentary

Morgan is featured in Bayer Mack's 2019 documentary, No Lye: An American Beauty Story, that chronicles the rise and decline of the black-owned ethnic beauty industry.

In Spanish: Garrett Augustus Morgan para niños

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Frederick McKinley Jones (May 17, 1893 - February 21, 1961) was an American inventor, entrepreneur, winner of the National Medal of Technology, and an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His innovations in refrigeration brought great improvement to the long-haul transportation of perishable goods. He co-founded Thermo King.

Jones was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 17, 1893 to a White father and Black mother. His mother deserted him when he was a child. His father struggled to raise him on his own. After he was virtually orphaned at the age of seven, he was raised by a priest at a Catholic rectory in Cincinnati. Jones left school after 6th grade and left the rectory to return to Cincinnati at age 11, where he got a job first as a cleaning boy and by age 14 he was working as an automobile mechanic. He boosted his natural mechanical ability and inventive mind with independent reading and study and the willingness to seek new pastures in his search for advancement, against the odds.

In 1912, Jones moved to Hallock, Minnesota, where he worked as a mechanic on a 50,000-acre (200 km ²) farm.

After service with the U.S. Army in World War I, Jones returned to Hallock; while employed as a mechanic, Jones taught himself electronics and built a transmitter for the town's new radio station. He also invented a device to combine sound with motion pictures. This attracted the attention of Joseph A. Numero of Minneapolis, Minnesota, who hired Jones in 1930 to improve the sound equipment made by his firm, Cinema Supplies Inc.

Refrigeration

Around 1938, Jones designed a portable air-cooling unit for trucks carrying perishable food, and received a patent for it on July 12, 1940. Numero sold his movie sound equipment business to RCA and formed a new company in partnership with Jones, the U.S. Thermo Control Company (later the Thermo King Corporation) which became a $3 million business by 1949. Portable cooling units designed by Jones were especially important during World War II, preserving blood, medicine, and food for use at army hospitals and on open battlefields.

Distinctions and honors

During his life, Jones was awarded 61 patents. Forty were for refrigeration equipment, while others went for portable X-ray machines, sound equipment, and gasoline engines.

1953 Merit Award, Phyllis Wheatley Auxiliary, "for outstanding achievements which serve as an inspiration to youth."

In 1977, he was posthumously inducted into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame.

In 1991, the National Medal of Technology was awarded to Joseph A. Numero and Frederick M. Jones. President George Bush presented the awards posthumously to their widows at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. Jones was the first African American to receive the award.

In the March 2009 issue of Heavy Duty Truck magazine, editor Tom Berg dubbed Jones "The King of Cool", and wrote that his "technological breakthrough redefined the global marketplace, with cultural reverberations felt from the world's largest cities to its most isolated villages."

He died of lung cancer in Minneapolis in 1961, predeceasing his wife Lucille. In an obituary in the Saturday Evening Post it was said "Most engineers start at the bottom of a project and work up, but Fred takes a flying leap to the top of the mountain and then backs down, cutting steps for himself and the rest of us as he goes." Jones continued filing for patents almost up until his death, receiving his last patent in February 1960.

US patent 2,163,754 was issued on June 27, 1939 - Ticket dispensing machine.

US patent D132,182 was issued on April 28, 1942 - Design for air conditioning unit.

US patent 2,336,735 was issued on December 14, 1943 - Removable cooling units for compartments.

US patent 2,337,164 was issued on December 21, 1943 - Means for automatically stopping and starting gas engines.

US patent 2,376,968 was issued on May 29, 1945 - Two-cycle gas engine.

US patent 2,417,253 was issued on March 11, 1947 - Two-cycle gas engine.

US patent 2,475,841 was issued on July 12, 1949 - Automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks.

US patent 2,475,842 was issued on July 12, 1949 - Starter generator.

US patent 2,475,843 was issued on July 12, 1949 - Means operated by a starter generator for cooling a gas engine.

US patent 2,477,377 was issued on July 26, 1949 - Means for thermostatically operating gas engines.

US patent 2,504,841 was issued on April 18, 1950 - Rotary compressor.

US patent 2,509,099 was issued on May 23, 1950 - System for controlling operation of refrigeration units.

US patent D159,209 was issued on July 4, 1950 - Design for air conditioning unit.

US patent 2,523,273 was issued on September 26, 1950 - Engine actuated ventilating system.

US patent 2,526,874 was issued on October 24, 1950 - Apparatus for heating or cooling atmosphere within an enclosure.

US patent 2,535,682 was issued on December 26, 1950 - Prefabricated refrigerator construction.

US patent 2,581,956 was issued on January 8, 1952 - Refrigeration control device.

US patent 2,666,298 was issued on January 19, 1954 - Methods and means of defrosting a cold diffuser.

US patent 2,696,086 was issued on December 7, 1954 - Method and means for air conditioning.

US patent 2,780,923 was issued on February 12, 1957 - Method and means for preserving perishable foodstuffs in transit.

US patent 2,850,001 was issued on September 2, 1958 - Control device for internal combustion engine.

US patent 2,926,005 was issued on February 23, 1960 - Thermostat and temperature control system.

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Learn Frederick McKinley Jones facts for kids

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Colin Luther Powell, KCB (Honorary), MSC, (born April 5, 1937) is a retired General in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State (2001-2005), serving under President George W. Bush. He was the first African American appointed to that position. As a General in the United States Army, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987-1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-1993), holding the latter position during the Gulf War. He was the first and, so far, the only African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He was born Colin Luther Powell on April 5, 1937, in Harlem, New York City, New York. His father, Luther Powell, was a shipping clerk. His mother, Maud Powell, was a seamstress. Both had immigrated to the United States from Jamaica. He grew up in south Bronx. He joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) while he was a student at City College of New York. He commanded his unit's precision drill team and achieved the highest rank in ROTC, cadet colonel. When he graduated in 1958, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army.

Army career

His first assignment was in West Germany. He was promoted to the rank of Captain on June 1, 1962. Powell then served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War. He was wounded twice while in Vietnam. Once by a Viet Cong booby trap. He received a Purple Heart. A year later he received a Bronze Star Medal. He was wounded a second time in a helicopter crash where he saved two other soldiers. For this action he was awarded the Soldier's Medal. Between his two tours in Vietnam, Powell was promoted to the rank of major in May 1966.

Powell then earned an MBA degree at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He received a White House fellowship and worked in the Office of Management and Budget during 1972-1973. As a lieutenant colonel Powell served as a battalion commander in the 2d Infantry Division. In 1975 Powell was promoted to full colonel and became a brigade commander in the 101st Airborne Division. He was promoted to the rank of general in 1989. He was appointed to the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President George H. W. Bush. He oversaw a number of crisis situations including Operation Desert Storm. In 1993 he retired from the military as a four-star general.

United States Secretary of State

In 2001 he was nominated and confirmed as US Secretary of State. After the September 11 attacks he took a leading role in aligning allies for military action in Afghanistan. Powell dealt with a number of international crises including a near war between India and Pakistan (both of which had nuclear weapons) in 2001-2002. In February 2003 he appeared before the United Nations Security Council. He presented evidence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This convinced many in the US that Iraq was a threat. In September 2004 he appeared before the United States Congress to testify that the intelligence used to show Iraq had WMDs was wrong. Then, on November 15, 2004, Powell announced his resignation.

Other achievements

1993 he was the founder of America's Promise. This is a charitable organization that helps at-risk children.

1993 was awarded an honorary Knight Commander (KCB) of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath by Queen Elizabeth II.

1995, Powell published his memoir, "My American Journey".

1997 he started America's Promise Alliance to help children and youths.

2012 he published his second memoir "It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership".

Images for kids

Powell in April 1989, as the Commanding General of FORSCOM.

Powell in November 1989, on his official Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff portrait.

General Colin Powell, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, waves from his motorcade during the Persian Gulf War Welcome Home Parade in New York City.

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Colin Luther Powell, KCB (Honorary), MSC, (born April 5, 1937) is a retired General in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State (2001-2005), serving under President George W. Bush. He was the first African American appointed to that position.

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Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 - July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.

Eleanora Fagan was born on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia to African American unwed teenage couple Clarence Halliday and Sarah Julia "Sadie" Fagan. Not long after Eleanora was born, Clarence abandoned his family to pursue a career as a jazz banjo player and guitarist.

Eleanora grew up in Baltimore and had a very difficult childhood. Her mother often took what were then known as "transportation jobs", serving on passenger railroads. Eleanora lived in her aunt's house (her mother's married half-sister, Eva Miller) and was raised largely by her aunt's mother-in-law, Martha Miller. The girl suffered from her mother's absences and being in others' care for her first decade of life.

After attending kindergarten at St. Frances Academy, she frequently skipped school. When she was nine years old, she was brought before the juvenile court on January 5, 1925. She was sent to the House of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic reform school for African-American girls. After nine months, she was "paroled" on October 3, 1925, to her mother. Sadie had opened a restaurant, the East Side Grill, and mother and daughter worked long hours there. She dropped out of school at age 11.

At 12, she earned a living scrubbing marble steps as well as kitchen and bathroom floors of neighborhood homes. Around this time, she first heard the records of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. By the end of 1928, Holiday's mother moved to Harlem, New York, again leaving Eleanora with Martha Miller.

By early 1929, Holiday had joined her mother in Harlem.

Career outline

After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice.

She took her professional pseudonym from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and Clarence Halliday, whom she believed to be her father. At the outset of her career, she spelled her last name "Halliday", her father's birth surname, but eventually changed it to "Holiday".

She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard.

Holiday had 16 best-selling songs in 1937, making the year her most commercially successful. It was in this year that Holiday scored her sole number one hit as a featured vocalist on the available pop charts of the 1930s, "Carelessly". The hit "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm", was also recorded by Ray Noble, Glen Gray and Fred Astaire, whose rendering was a bestseller for weeks. Holiday's version ranked 6 on the year-end single chart available for 1937.

In February 1938, Holiday was hired by Artie Shaw and became one of the first black women to work with a white orchestra. That was unusual at that time. This was also the first time a black female singer employed full-time toured the segregated U.S. South with a white bandleader. In situations where there was a lot of racial tension, Shaw was known to stick up for his vocalist. In her autobiography, Holiday describes an incident in which she was not permitted to sit on the bandstand with other vocalists because she was black. Shaw said to her, "I want you on the band stand like Helen Forrest, Tony Pastor and everyone else." When touring the South, Holiday would sometimes be heckled by members of the audience.

In 1939, Holiday recorded her biggest selling record, "Strange Fruit" for Commodore, charting at number 16 on the available pop charts for the 1930s.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles. After a short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall.

In September 1946, Holiday began her only major film, New Orleans, in which she starred opposite Louis Armstrong and Woody Herman.

She was a successful concert performer throughout the 1950s with two further sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall. Because of personal struggles and an altered voice, her final recordings were met with mixed reaction but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958.

Vocal style

Holiday's delivery made her performances recognizable throughout her career. Her improvisation compensated for lack of musical education. Holiday said that she always wanted her voice to sound like an instrument and some of her influences were Louis Armstrong and the singer Bessie Smith.

Frank Sinatra was influenced as a young man by her performances on 52nd Street. He told Ebony magazine in 1958 about her impact:

With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years.

Personal life

Billie Holiday was married three times. Her first marriage was to James Monroe in 1941, but they divorced in 1947.

Billie Holiday's second husband was Joe Guy. They got married in 1951 but divorced in 1957.

Soon after, she then married Louis McKay, her third and final husband. McKay was a mobster and was abusive towards Holiday. They were separated (but not divorced) at the time of her death.

Holiday was childless, but she had two godchildren: singer Billie Lorraine Feather (the daughter of Leonard Feather) and Bevan Dufty (the son of William Dufty).

Holiday died of cirrhosis on July 17, 1959, at age 44.

Her funeral Mass was held on July 21, 1959, at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan. She was buried at Saint Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx.

Interesting facts about Billie Holiday

She was nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young.

Holiday was friends with the popular singer Ella Fitzgerald.

Holiday authored an autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, published in 1956.

Holiday won four Grammy Awards, all of them posthumously, for Best Historical Album.

She was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

In 2000, she was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence.

She was named one of the 50 Great Voices by NPR; and was ranked fourth on the Rolling Stone list of "200 Greatest Singers of All Time" (2023).

Several films about her life have been released, most recently The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021).

In 1985, a statue of Billie Holiday was erected in Baltimore; the statue was completed in 1993 with additional panels of images inspired by her seminal song Strange Fruit.

The Billie Holiday Monument is located at Pennsylvania and West Lafayette avenues in Baltimore's Upton neighborhood.

In 2019, Chirlane McCray announced that New York City would build a statue honoring Holiday near Queens Borough Hall.

The song Angel of Harlem by Irish rock band U2, released as a single in December 1988, was written as a homage to Billie Holiday.

Billie Holiday qoutes

"If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all."

"Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough."

"Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose."

"If I don't have friends, then I ain't got nothing."

Films and plays about Holiday

The biographical film Lady Sings the Blues, loosely based on Holiday's autobiography, was released in 1972 and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Diana Ross for Best Actress.

Another film, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, starred Andra Day and was released in 2021. It is based on the book Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari.

Holiday is the primary character in the play Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, with music by Lanie Robertson.

Billie is a 2019 documentary film based on interviews in the 1970s by Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who was researching a book on Holiday that was never completed.

Billie Holiday was also portrayed by actress Paula Jai Parker in Touched by an Angel's 2000 episode "God Bless the Child".

Discography

Filmography

Theatrical films

1933: The Emperor Jones, appeared as an extra

1935: Symphony in Black, short (with Duke Ellington)

1947: New Orleans

1950: 'Sugar Chile' Robinson, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and His Sextet

Television appearances

August 27, 1949

Arlene Francis Show, NY (1)
Arlene Francis
"The Man I Love", " All of Me", "Lover Man"

November 3, 1957

Live Broadcast from Mister Kelly's, Chicago (1)

-

"Good Morning Heartache", "You Better Go Now"

November 18, 1958

Mars Club, Music Hall Parade Voyons Un Peu, Paris France (2)

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"I Only Have Eyes for You"

(1) = Available on audio (2) = Available on DVD

In Spanish: Billie Holiday para niños

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Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman (January 26, 1892 - April 30, 1926) was the first female African American and Native American pilot ever to hold an international pilot license. She fought discrimination to follow her dream of becoming a pilot. She became a skilled barnstormer (a pilot that travels to perform stunts and give rides) and an aviation educator.

Coleman was born in Texas in 1892. Her mother was African American and her father was Native American. She was the tenth of thirteen children. Her parents were sharecroppers. When Coleman was two, her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where Bessie later went to school. She loved reading and excelled in math.

Coleman's father believed that the family would be treated better if they moved to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Unable to convince his wife to accompany him, Coleman's father left the family when she was nine. Coleman's mother worked as a maid. During the cotton harvest, everyone in the family worked in the fields to earn extra money. It was hot, difficult work, and during the harvest, African American children could not go to school. Bessie still managed to finish all eight grades in the local school. Coleman decided that she wanted to go to college, so she saved her money. In about four years, she had enough money to begin college. A year later, she ran out of money.

At the age of 23, Coleman boarded a train and traveled to Chicago, where she moved in with her brothers. Coleman took a class to learn to become a manicurist, and soon found a job at the White Sox Barber Shop in Chicago. There she heard stories of flying during wartime from pilots returning home from World War I. She took a second job at a chili parlor to save money so that she could become a pilot. In early 1917, Bessie Coleman married Claude Glenn, but she never publicly acknowledged the marriage, and the two soon separated.

At the time, aviation (flight) schools in America were not allowing women or black people to attend. Bessie's friend Robert Abbott told her that she could travel to France to fly. She studied the French language after work at night. She got a new job managing a restaurant and saved her money. Robert Abbot and her friends helped her pay for the trip, and in 1920, Coleman sailed to France. She learned to be a pilot at the Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation. In 1921, Coleman became the first female African American pilot and the first female Native American pilot to hold an international pilot license. She earned it from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

Coleman went back to the United States to work as a barnstormer, performing tricks and stunts in her airplane. Barnstormers like Coleman flew planes in loops, figure eights, and other patterns while audiences watched. Coleman performed in the United States and Europe. In the 1920s, much of the United States still practiced racial segregation. Coleman refused to perform at places that did not let African Americans watch equally. For one show in Texas, Coleman refused to perform unless the showrunners let everyone in the audience enter through the same gate instead of making one gate for white people and one for black people. She also taught flying lessons and encouraged women to learn to be pilots.

Coleman wanted to open an aviation school in the United States where black students could learn to be pilots.

In April 1926, Coleman and her mechanic, William Will, were practicing for a performance the next day. Will was piloting the plane when it flipped over and started to dive. Coleman fell out of the plane and was killed. William Wills was unable to regain control of the plane and it plummeted to the ground. Wills died upon impact and the plane exploded and burst into flames. Although the wreckage of the plane was badly burned, it was later discovered that a wrench used to service the engine had jammed the controls.

Coleman is buried in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery.

Atlanta, Texas, has a Regional History Museum that proudly displays a smaller version of Bessie Coleman's yellow bi-plane "Queen Bess." The museum display also includes a uniform and other memorabilia regarding the life and times of Bessie Coleman. Outside the regional history museum is a Texas Historical Marker located at 101 N. East Street in Historic Downtown, Atlanta, Texas. The road to the Hall-Miller Municipal Airport in Atlanta, Texas, is named Bessie Coleman Drive in her honor.

A public library in Chicago was named in Coleman's honor, as are roads at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Oakland International Airport in Oakland, California, Tampa International Airport in Florida, and at Germany's Frankfurt International Airport. A memorial plaque has been placed by the Chicago Cultural Center at the location of her former home, 41st and King Drive in Chicago, and it is a tradition for African-American aviators to drop flowers during flyovers of her grave at Lincoln Cemetery.

A roundabout leading to Nice Airport in the South of France was named after her in March 2016, and there are streets in Poitiers, and the 20th Arrondissement of Paris named after her.

Bessie Coleman Middle School in Cedar Hill, Texas, is named for her.

Bessie Coleman Boulevard in Waxahachie, Texas, where she lived as a child, is named in her honor.

B. Coleman Aviation, a fixed-base operator based at Gary/Chicago International Airport, is named in her honor.

Several Bessie Coleman Scholarship Awards have been established for high school seniors planning careers in aviation.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a 32-cent stamp honoring Coleman in 1995. The Bessie Coleman Commemorative is the 18th in the U.S. Postal Service Black Heritage series.

In 2001, Coleman was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

In 2006, she was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

In 2012, a bronze plaque with Coleman's likeness was installed on the front doors of Paxon School for Advanced Studies located on the site of the Jacksonville airfield where Coleman's fatal flight took off.

Coleman was honored with a toy character in season 5, episode 11a of the children's animated television program Doc McStuffins.

She was placed No. 14 on Flying's 2013 list of the "51 Heroes of Aviation."

In 2014, Coleman was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

On January 25, 2015, Orlando renamed West Washington Street to recognize the street's most accomplished resident.

On January 26, 2017, the 125th anniversary of her birth, a Google Doodle was posted in her honor.

In December 2019, The New York Times featured Coleman in their Overlooked (obituary feature), "Bessie Coleman, Pioneering African-American Aviatrix."

Bessie Coleman quotes

"I refused to take no for an answer."

"You've never lived till you've flown."

"A woman is like a teabag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water."

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."

"The only source of knowledge is experience."

Interesting facts about Bessie Coleman

Bessie was extremely intelligent and fought hard against the assumption that black women were not capable of great things.

She applied to flight schools all across the United States but was not accepted at any of them.

Robert Abbot, who was the founder and publisher of the country's largest black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, heard about Coleman's determination. He published her story in his paper and raised money for her to travel to France.

The Caudron Brothers of France were famous like the Wright brothers of the United States.

Bessie learned to perform airplane stunts from Anthony Fokker.

Bessie was briefly married, but never publicly talked about it.

Coleman's nicknames included "Queen Bess" and "Brave Bessie."

She survived a plane crash in 1923, in which her plane cut out during a performance.

In Spanish: Bessie Coleman para niños

Images for kids

Coleman's grave at Lincoln Cemetery

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Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. (December 18, 1912 - July 4, 2002) was a United States Air Force (USAF) general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen.

He was the first African-American brigadier general in the USAF. On December 9, 1998, he was advanced to four-star general by President Bill Clinton. During World War II, Davis was commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group, which escorted bombers on air combat missions over Europe. Davis flew sixty missions in P-39 Airacobra, Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang fighters and was one of the first African-American pilots to see combat. Davis followed in his father's footsteps in breaking racial barriers, as Benjamin O. Davis Sr. was the first black brigadier general in the United States Army.

In the summer of 1926, at age 13, Davis Jr (or Davis) flew with a barnstorming pilot at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C. The experience led to his determination to become a pilot himself. In 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression, Davis graduated from Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio. That same year he attended Western Reserve University (1929-1930).

Early military career

After attending the University of France and the University of Chicago, Davis entered the United States Military Academy ( West Point) in July 1932. He graduated from West Point in 1936, becoming the first black man to do so since 1889. He was sponsored by Representative Oscar De Priest (R-IL) of Chicago, at the time, the only black member of Congress. During his four years at the academy, Davis was isolated by his white classmates on account of his race. He never had a roommate. He ate by himself. His classmates rarely spoke to him outside the line of duty, intending that their "silent treatment" would drive him from the academy. It had the opposite effect; it steeled his determination to endure the animosity and to compete and graduate. Ultimately, his perseverance earned the respect of his classmates, as evidenced by a biographical note of Davis in the 1936 yearbook, the Howitzer:

The courage, tenacity, and intelligence with which he conquered a problem incomparably more difficult than plebe year won for him the sincere admiration of his classmates, and his single-minded determination to continue in his chosen career cannot fail to inspire respect wherever fortune may lead him.

Davis graduated in June 1936, 35th in a class of 276. He was the academy's fourth black graduate after Henry Ossian Flipper (1877), John Hanks Alexander (1887), and Charles Young (1889). When he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, the Army had only two black officers who weren't chaplains - Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Benjamin O. Davis Jr. After graduation he married Agatha Scott whom he met while a cadet at West Point.

At the start of his junior year at West Point, Davis had applied for the Army Air Corps but was rejected because it did not accept African Americans. In 1936, the U.S. Army assigned Davis to the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment (one of the original Buffalo Soldier regiments) at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was not allowed inside the base officers' club based on his race.

World War II

Early in 1941, the Roosevelt administration, in response to public pressure for greater black participation in the military as war approached, ordered the War Department to create a black flying unit. Captain Davis was assigned to the first training class at Tuskegee Army Air Field (hence the name Tuskegee Airmen). In July 1941, Davis entered aviation cadet training with the Tuskegee Airmen's first class of aviation cadets, Class 42-C-SE. On March 6, 1942, Davis graduated from aviation cadet training with Captain George S. Roberts; 2nd Lt. Charles DeBow Jr. (Feb 13, 1918 - April 4, 1968), 2nd Lt. Mac Ross (1912-1944), and 2nd Lt. Lemuel R. Custis (1915-2005). Davis and his four classmates became the first African American combat fighter pilots in the U.S. military.

Davis was the first African American officer to solo an Army Air Corps aircraft. In July that year, having been promoted to lieutenant colonel, he was named commander of the first all-black air unit, the 99th Pursuit Squadron.

The squadron, equipped with Curtiss P-40 fighters, was sent to Tunisia in North Africa in the spring of 1943. On June 2, they saw combat for the first time in a dive-bombing mission against the German-held island of Pantelleria as part of Operation Corkscrew. The squadron later supported the Allied invasion of Sicily.

In September 1943, Davis was deployed to the United States to take command of the 332nd Fighter Group, a larger all-black unit preparing to go overseas. Soon after his arrival, there was an attempt to stop the use of black pilots in combat. Senior officers in the Army Air Forces recommended to the Army chief of staff, General George Marshall, that the 99th (Davis's old unit) be removed from combat operations as it had performed poorly. This infuriated Davis as he had never been told of any deficiencies with the unit. He held a news conference at The Pentagon to defend his men and then presented his case to a War Department committee studying the use of black servicemen.

Marshall ordered an inquiry but allowed the 99th to continue fighting in the meantime. The inquiry eventually reported that the 99th's performance was comparable to other air units, but any questions about the squadron's fitness were answered in January 1944 when its pilots shot down 12 German planes in two days while protecting the Anzio beachhead.

Colonel Davis and his 332nd Fighter Group arrived in Italy soon after that. The four-squadron group, which was called the Red Tails for the distinctive markings of its planes, were based at Ramitelli Airfield and flew many missions deep into German territory. By summer 1944 the Group had transitioned to P-47 Thunderbolts. In the summer of 1945, Davis took over the all-black 477th Bombardment Group, which was stationed at Godman Field, Kentucky.

Freeman Field Mutiny 1945

Davis was one of ten officers to preside over the Freeman Field mutiny courts-martial; appointed by General Frank O'Driscoll Hunter. They were: Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Jr., Captain George L. Knox II, Captain James T. Wiley, Captain John H. Duren, Captain Charles R. Stanton, captain William T. Yates, Captain Elmore M. Kennedy, Captain Fitzroy Newsum, 1st Lieutenant William Robert Ming Jr. and 1st Lieutenant James Y. Carter. Trial Judge Advocates were: Captain James W. Redden and 1st Lieutenant Charles B. Hall.

United States Air Force

In July 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 ordering the racial integration of the armed forces. Colonel Davis helped draft the Air Force plan for implementing this order. The Air Force was the first of the services to integrate fully.

In April 1957 General Davis arrived at Ramstein Air Base, West Germany, as chief of staff of Twelfth Air Force, U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE). When the Twelfth Air Force was transferred to James Connally Air Force Base, Texas in December 1957, he assumed new duties as deputy chief of staff for operations, Headquarters USAFE, Wiesbaden Air Base, West Germany. While in West Germany he was temporarily promoted to major general in 1959, and his promotion to brigadier general was made permanent in 1960.

In July 1961, he returned to the United States and Headquarters U.S. Air Force, where he served as the director of manpower and organization, deputy chief of staff for programs and requirements. Davis's promotion to major general was made permanent early the next year, and in February 1965 he was assigned as assistant deputy chief of staff, programs and requirements. He remained in that position until his assignment as chief of staff for the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) in April 1965, at which time he was promoted to lieutenant general. He assumed command of the Thirteenth Air Force at Clark Air Base in the Republic of the Philippines in August 1967.

Davis was assigned as deputy commander in chief, U.S. Strike Command, with headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, in August 1968, with additional duty as commander in chief, Middle-East, Southern Asia and Africa. He retired from active military service on February 1, 1970.

On December 9, 1998, Davis Jr. was promoted to general, U.S. Air Force (retired), with President Bill Clinton pinning on his four-star insignia. In the late 1980s he began to work on his autobiography, Benjamin O. Davis Jr.: American: An Autobiography.

Dates of rank

General Davis' effective dates of promotion are:

Decorations and honors

At the time of Davis's retirement, he held the rank of lieutenant general, but on December 9, 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded him a fourth star, raising him to the rank of full general. After retirement, he headed the federal sky marshal program, and in 1971 was named Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Environment, Safety, and Consumer Affairs. Overseeing the development of airport security and highway safety, Davis was one of the chief proponents of the 55 mile per hour speed limit enacted nationwide by the U.S. government in 1974 to save gasoline and lives. He retired from the Department of Transportation in 1975, and in 1978 served on the American Battle Monuments Commission, on which his father had served decades before. In 1991, he published his autobiography, Benjamin O. Davis Jr.: American ( Smithsonian Institution Press). He is a 1992 recipient of the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution.

Military decorations

His military decorations included:

Creator of the Davis Line/Median line

Historically, both the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan espoused a One-China Policy that considered the strait part of the exclusive economic zone of a single "China". In practice, a maritime border of control exists along the median line down the strait. In 1955, Davis defined this median line by drawing a line down the middle of the strait,. The US then pressured both sides into entering into a tacit agreement not to cross the median line.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Davis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Benjamin O. Davis Jr Aerospace Technical High School Detroit, Michigan, and Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Middle School in Compton, California, as well as the former Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Aviation High School in Cleveland, Ohio, are all named in his honor. Benjamin O. Davis High School of the Aldine Independent School District in Houston, Texas, opened in 2012.

The Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Award is presented to senior members of the Civil Air Patrol - United States Air Force Auxiliary who successfully complete the second level of professional development, complete the technical training required for the Leadership Award, and attend Squadron Leadership School, designed "to enhance a senior member's performance at the squadron level and to increase understanding of the basic function of a squadron and how to improve squadron operations."

In 2015, West Point named a newly constructed barracks after him.

He was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum in 1996.

On November 1, 2019, the airfield at the United States Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was renamed Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. Airfield.

Davis's wife Agatha died on March 10, 2002. (Aged 94) Davis, who had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease, died at age 89 on July 4, 2002, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He was interred with Agatha on July 17, at Arlington National Cemetery. A Red Tail P-51 Mustang, similar to the one he had flown in World War II, flew overhead during his funeral service. Bill Clinton said, "General Davis is here today as proof that a person can overcome adversity and discrimination, achieve great things, turn skeptics into believers; and through example and perseverance, one person can bring truly amazing change".

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Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. (December 18, 1912 - July 4, 2002) was a United States Air Force (USAF) general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen. He was the first African-American brigadier general in the USAF. On December 9, 1998, he was advanced to four-star general by President Bill Clinton.

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Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 - January 17, 1996) was an American lawyer, educator, and politician. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives. Jordan is known for her eloquent opening statement at the House Judiciary Committee hearings during the impeachment process against Richard Nixon. In 1976, she became the first African-American, and the first woman, to ever deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honors. She was the first African-American woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery. Jordan is also known for her work as chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.

Barbara Charline Jordan was born in Houston, Texas's Fifth Ward. Jordan's childhood was centered on church life. Her mother was Arlyne Patten Jordan, a teacher in the church, and her father was Benjamin Jordan, a Baptist preacher. Through her mother, Jordan was the great-granddaughter of Edward Patton, who was one of the last African American members of the Texas House of Representatives prior to disenfranchisement of Black Texans under Jim Crow. Barbara Jordan was the youngest of three children, with siblings Rose Mary Jordan McGowan and Bennie Jordan Creswell (1933-2000). Jordan attended Roberson Elementary School. She graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School in 1952 with honors.

Jordan credited a speech she heard in her high school years by Edith S. Sampson with inspiring her to become an attorney. Because of segregation, she could not attend The University of Texas at Austin and instead chose Texas Southern University, an historically black institution, majoring in political science and history. At Texas Southern University, Jordan was a national champion debater, defeating opponents from Yale and Brown, and tying Harvard University. She graduated magna cum laude in 1956. At Texas Southern University, she pledged Delta Gamma chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She attended Boston University School of Law, graduating in 1959.

Jordan taught political science at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama for a year. In 1960, she returned to Houston and started a private law practice.

Political career

Jordan campaigned unsuccessfully in 1962 and 1964 for the Texas House of Representatives. She won a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966, becoming the first African-American state senator in Texas since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body. Re-elected to a full term in the Texas Senate in 1968, she served until 1972. She was the first African-American female to serve as president pro tempore of the state senate and served one day, June 10, 1972, as acting governor of Texas. Jordan was the first African-American woman to serve as governor of a state. During her time in the Texas Legislature, Jordan sponsored or cosponsored some 70 bills.

In 1972, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first woman elected in her own right to represent Texas in the House. She received extensive support from former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who helped her secure a position on the House Judiciary Committee. In 1974, she made an influential televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, Johnson's successor as president. In 1975, she was appointed by Carl Albert, then Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, to the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee.

In 1976, Jordan, mentioned as a possible running mate to Jimmy Carter of Georgia, became instead the first African-American woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Despite not being a candidate, Jordan received one delegate vote (0.03%) for president at the Convention.

In November 1977, Barbara Jordan spoke at the 1977 National Women's Conference. Other speakers included Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Bella Abzug, Audrey Colom, Claire Randall, Gerridee Wheeler, Cecilia Burciaga, Gloria Steinem, Lenore Hershey and Jean O'Leary.

Jordan retired from politics in 1979 and became an adjunct professor teaching ethics at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. She was again a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.

In 1994, Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the NAACP presented her with the Spingarn Medal. She was honored many times and was given over 20 honorary degrees from institutions across the country, including Harvard and Princeton, and was elected to the Texas and National Women's Halls of Fame.

Statement on the Articles of Impeachment

On July 25, 1974, Jordan delivered a 15-minute televised speech in front of the members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. She presented an opening speech during the hearings that were part of the impeachment process against Richard Nixon. This speech is thought to be one of the greatest speeches of 20th-century American history. Throughout her speech, Jordan strongly stood by the Constitution of the United States. She defended the checks and balances system, which was set in place to inhibit any politician from abusing their power. Jordan never flat out said that she wanted Nixon impeached, but rather subtly and cleverly implied her thoughts. She simply stated facts that proved Nixon to be untrustworthy and heavily involved in illegal situations, and quoted the drafters of the Constitution to argue that actions like Nixon's during the scandal corresponded with their understanding of impeachable offenses. She protested that the Watergate scandal will forever ruin the trust American citizens have for their government. This powerful and influential statement earned Jordan national praise for her rhetoric, morals, and wisdom.

Legislation

Jordan supported the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, legislation that required banks to lend and make services available to underserved poor and minority communities. She supported the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and expansion of that act to cover language minorities; this extended protection to Hispanics in Texas and was opposed by Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe and Secretary of State Mark White. She also authored an act that ended federal authorization of price fixing by manufacturers. Jordan was also a proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment and issued a statement in support of extending the deadline in 1979. During Jordan's tenure as a Congresswoman, she sponsored or cosponsored over 300 bills or resolutions, several of which are still in effect today as law.

U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform

From 1994 until her death, Jordan chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. The commission recommended that total immigration be cut by one-third to approximately 550,000 per year. The commission supported increasing enforcement against undocumented migrants and their employers, eliminating visa preferences for siblings and adult children of U.S. citizens, and ending unskilled immigration except for refugees and nuclear families. The commission's report to Congress said that it was "a right and responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest", concluded that "legal immigration has strengthened and can continue to strengthen this country" and "decrie[d] hostility and discrimination against immigrants as antithetical to the traditions and interests of the country." The commission recommended that the United States reduce the number of refugees admitted annually to a floor of 50,000 (this level would be lifted during emergencies).

The recommendations made by the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform under Jordan's leadership are frequently cited by American immigration restrictionists.

Personal life

The U.S. National Archives described Barbara Jordan as the first LGBTQ+ woman in Congress. Jordan's partner of approximately twenty years was Nancy Earl, an educational psychologist who met Jordan on a camping trip in the late 1960s. Earl was an occasional speechwriter for Jordan, and later cared for her when she developed multiple sclerosis in 1973. While the Houston Chronicle obituary of Jordan identified Earl as her "longtime companion", and while other sources have stated that Earl was Jordan's same-sex partner, neither woman is known to have publicly stated that the two had a romantic relationship.

In the KUT-FM radio documentary Rediscovering Barbara Jordan, President Bill Clinton said that he had wanted to nominate Jordan for the United States Supreme Court, but by the time he could do so, Jordan's health problems prevented him from nominating her.

On July 31, 1988, Jordan nearly drowned in her backyard swimming pool while doing physical therapy, but she was saved by Earl, who found her floating in the pool and revived her.

Death and burial

Jordan died at the age of 59 of complications from pneumonia on January 17, 1996, in Austin, Texas. She also had leukemia.

She was interred in Texas State Cemetery. She was the first African American to receive this honor, and previously advocated African Americans to be buried in the state cemetery when she served in the Texas State Senate. Jordan's grave rests near that of the "Father of Texas" Stephen F. Austin.

Recognition and legacy

Jordan's 1974 statement on the articles of impeachment (regarding President Richard Nixon) was listed as #13 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank).

Jordan's 1976 Democratic National Convention keynote address, the first major convention keynote speech ever by a woman and the first by an African American, was listed as #5 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank).

Jordan was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1978 to 1980.

The main terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is named after Jordan. The airport also features a statue of Jordan by artist Bruce Wolfe.

A boulevard in central Austin is named after Jordan. Several schools bear her name, including elementary schools in Dallas, Texas, Odessa, Texas, and Austin, Texas, Barbara Jordan Early College Prep School, an elementary school in Richmond, Texas, Barbara C. Jordan Intermediate School, a middle school in Cibolo, Texas, Barbara Jordan High School in Houston, and The Barbara Jordan Institute for Policy Research at her undergraduate alma mater Texas Southern University. There is also a park named after Jordan in Needville, Texas (The Barbara Jordan Park).

The Kaiser Family Foundation operates the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars, a fellowship designed for people of color who are college juniors, seniors, and recent graduates as a summer experience working in a congressional office.

An elementary school in University City School District is named after her, Barbara C. Jordan Elementary in University City, Missouri.

Other honors

In 2000, the Jordan/Rustin Coalition (JRC) was created, honoring Jordan and Bayard Rustin, a leader in the civil rights movement and close confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. The organization mobilized gay and lesbian African Americans to aid in the passage of marriage equality in the state of California. According to its website, "the mission [of the JRC] is to empower Black same-gender loving, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals and families in Greater Los Angeles, to promote equal marriage rights and to advocate for fair treatment of everyone without regard to race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression."

On March 27, 2000, a play based on Jordan's life premiered at the Victory Garden Theater in Chicago, Illinois. Titled, Voice of Good Hope, Kristine Thatcher's biographical evocation of Jordan's life played in theaters from San Francisco to New York.

On April 24, 2009, a statue of Barbara Jordan was unveiled at the University of Texas at Austin, where Jordan taught at the time of her death. The Barbara Jordan statue campaign was paid for by a student fee increase approved by the University of Texas Board of Regents. The effort was originally spearheaded by the 2002-2003 Tappee class of the Texas Orange Jackets, the "oldest women's organization at the University" (of Texas at Austin).

In 2011, the Barbara Jordan Forever Stamp was issued. It is the 34th stamp in the Black Heritage series of U.S. stamps.

In 2012, Jordan was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.

The Barbara Jordan Media Awards are given annually to media professionals and students who "have produced material for the public which accurately and positively reports on individuals with disabilities, using People First language and respectful depictions".

The Barbara Jordan Public-Private Leadership Award is presented by Texas Southern University's School of Public Affairs and School of Law. Its first recipient was former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on June 4, 2015.

The former sorting facility in downtown Houston was renamed the Barbara Jordan Post Office.

In the years following Jordan's passing, more African Americans would receive the honor of being buried in the Texas State Cemetery as well, including musical artists James Henry Cotton and Barbara Smith Conrad.

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Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 - January 17, 1996) was an American lawyer, educator, and politician. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.

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